In Focus | Mark Cohen

I grew up in the late ’70s and early ’80s, around the time Mark Cohen was documenting life in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. And although my stomping grounds of Sedgwick County, Kan., didn’t really resemble that gritty coal-mining town, I can’t help feeling a sense of nostalgia when I look at Cohen’s photographs. His images evoke a fondness for days gone by, despite how unpicturesque his depiction of kids and cars and cracked pavement and rundown houses may appear.

Related

The pictures are marked by splashes of bright color — a bright green dress, some pink nail polish, a red-painted fence — that give their subjects a sense of hopefulness and innocence. And as you look a little longer, you begin to see the duality of Cohen’s work: though in some ways his photographs are a record of urban decay, the lives he recorded are rich and vital, full of dirty faces, berry-stained hands and jump-ropes in mid-swing. Cohen was sometimes accused of crossing a line with his subjects; he roamed the streets, snapping away guerrilla-style and getting inappropriately close to strangers. (He was visited by the police more than once). But it’s clear Cohen wasn’t out to glorify or manipulate the people he depicted but rather to capture them honestly and in all their feisty integrity. Cohen, who was born in Wilkes-Barre and still lives there, is one of them.
A show of Cohen’s work, “True Color,” will be at New York’s Hasted Hunt Gallery until Aug. 28.